Diving

The Diving in the Marshall Islands is unparalleled

MV Windward and MV Indies Trader are presently based in the Marshalls. The Windward and Indies Trader 1 are set up for liveaboard diving, as well as day trips.

Dive Equipment

We have purchased a DDC (Deck Decompression Chamber) in the USA which is onboard the Windward to provide safety for advanced remote location sport diving. We have Nitrox, O2 ,Helium and Sorb for the Tech diving guys, Steel and aluminum twinsets, deco pony bottles etc.

We don’t provide personal equipment which you should bring with you, including mask, snorkel, fins.

Please be current with your PADI, NAUI, SSI License / Certification. We do not offer dive training or certification on Beran.

Bikini Atoll

Though too far from Beran for day trips, we have a concession agreement with the Bikini atoll local Govt and are offering trips to Bikini out of Kwajalein atoll between May and November. Trips will start with wreck diving in Kwajalein, then to the wilderness of the atomic atolls of Rongelap and Rongerick tand wreck Diving in Bikini on the nuclear fleet and then dive our way back to Kwajalein. Whole boat charters available now, contact us for details on booking a Bikini Dive Trip. Singles should contact Lani at Bikini Atoll divers.

The worlds best wreck diving in the worlds most pristine tropical marine environment. Bikini is now a world heritage site.

A personal explanation by Indies Trader founder Martin Daly…

“I was lucky enough to learn how to dive in the late 60s , early 70s in Townsville on the Barrier reef in Australia. In those early days most times when I went diving I was the very first person to dive at the location, there was no commercial fishing and I took for granted the abundance of everything! Napoleon fish, giant clams, resident reef fish , sharks of all kinds, huge painted crayfish and lush, live, old growth coral reef everywhere . I saw what a healthy coral reef environment should look like.

I dived extensively through Indonesia and South East Asia through the 80s and 90s as my job as a Commercial Salvage Diver, I dived on offshore oil platforms, in the most polluted harbours, up rivers, on shipwrecks, ancient and new and in all sorts of strange and remote locations. I remember my first trip to the offshore islands of the Sunda straights and Sumatra in the early eighties and the first Mentawai trips, whislt not as pristine as the barrier reef in those days, marine life- the clams, the sharks, napolean fish, the residential reef fish, tuna, billfish and crayfish were abundant. Today they are all but gone. The relentless pressure of a population of over 300 million people taking from the seas and the reefs in Indonesia has taken its toll, in such a short time the effect has been depressing. I rarely bother to dive there anymore, I can’t help but notice whats missing. the dead coral the reduced visibility etc.

From late 1998 till mid 2006 Indies Trader 1 explored the entire world for surf. The project was called the “Quiksilver Crossing” We completed a circumnavigation and visted over 27 countries and virtually every tropical island nation. We joined with an NGO called “Reef Check” and assisted with their global coral reef monitoring project. I obtained a personal snapshot of the health of the worlds coral reefs. What I saw was far worse than I could possibly have imagined, from French Polynesia to The Maldives most of the reef in the pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean were dead from coral bleaching.

It seemed that there were only a few places that were left almost intact, those that were protected by first world governments like Australia (northern Australia), Britain (The Chagos archipelego), France (Europa Island, French Polynesia, New Caledonia)),the USA (The ex Pacific trust territories and Carribean territories) and those places that were so remote that humanity hasn’t got around to stripping yet. I recently visited a remote part of Papua New guinea that was the best dive I had previously ever had and was heartbroken to see that all the sharks and fish were gone.-in only 8 years!

The most pristine and intact tropical marine environment in the world in my opinion is the Marshall Islands and adjacent atolls and reefs west of there. The last remaining Eden. When I put my head underwater I am relieved to see that everything is as it should be!

Incredible visibility, amazing WW2 shipwrecks and the most lush coral gardens I have ever seen. Whenever I am there I cant stay out of the water! There are large areas of genuinely unpopulated atolls. A simple observation that I have made , more people equals less marine life and visa versa!”